"Gosh! I didn't realize how much discussion my original article would create. A lot of people seemed to accuse me of living in cloud cuckoo land, whereas a lot more agreed with me. I think those who disagreed have either never used RISC OS or just liked a good rant! In either case, I feel compelled to write a short follow up article clarifying some of the points I made in the original article - all of which were perfectly valid." Read the follow up article.

I mean really - if you're telling me that updates aren't necessary, then I would really like to have your attention span, your Operating system, and your uber super duper sweet copy of DOOM. Well maybe I am getting carried away. But I would love perfectness.. I haven't run into an operating system that felt perfect to me since... forever?

It's not a matter of the OS/apps being perfect, obviously there's not much that's perfect in the world of software. But an older application or OS, even one that hasn't been updated in years, might still meet your needs better than the latest release. There are plenty of examples of newer and more successful products that are inferior to their predecessors, at least in certain ways.

Games, internet, and multimedia software may have moved on a lot in recent years, but I don't think the same is true of most productivity apps. As long as you don't need perfect compatibility with mainstream software, tasks like word processing, DTP and graphics are covered very well on RISC OS.

If that existing software meets your needs better than the software available on other platforms, why would it matter if it hadn't been updated? Obviously RISC OS and the apps that run on it do still meet the needs of the remaining RISC OS users.

It's all about using the best tool for the job, and that isn't necessarily the newest option.